


Changing Tides

by xannish



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xannish/pseuds/xannish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night before they set out for Choral Castle and potential clues about the kidnapping seven years ago, Guy reflects on his complicated past with Luke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changing Tides

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nightlit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightlit/gifts).



The waves were pounding against the docks of the Kaitzur Naval Port only a block from the inn where their band of travelers slept, chains jangling, wood and metal creaking. Somewhere there was even the clanking of someone hammering metal, working to repair the damaged vessel even this late into the night. Anise was snoring softly, sprawled on her bed. Tear had her pillow hugged close. Jade was closed in and still. And Luke… Luke slept like the dead, his mouth hanging open and a trickle of drool creeping from the side of it. Guy shoved down the impulse to creep over and wipe it away. He didn’t know how any of them were sleeping so soundly, but Luke most of all. This close to the place where he had been held seven years ago, this close to the potential for answers… Did he really not even wonder? Did he not care? How could he not have a hundred unanswered questions?

Guy sure as hell did.

He remembered Luke's disappearance clearly. He'd been taken in the night, practically out from under Guy's nose. As Luke's manservant, he should have been outraged. As Gailardia Galan Gardios, it should have made him glad to see the Fabre household thrown into turmoil: the lady of the house in panic, the Duke himself glowering and taking his frustration out on those around him. Their dear Luke, their only child, betrothed to Princess Natalia and through her, presumptive king to the entire kingdom, gone missing. Kidnapped by infiltrators from Malkuth. And as an infiltrator from Malkuth, he told himself he should have been thankful. He should have been soaking this in, or at least using the weakness in the House to find an opening to strike at its heart. Instead, Guy just felt hollow and unsatisfied. 

Maybe it was because this wasn’t the way he’d pictured it. It hadn't been the way his vengeance was supposed to take shape. It didn’t help that Van had been even more absent than usual. Thinking back, Guy supposed that Van didn’t have any reason to visit the manor without little Luke there to tutor, or else had been caught up in pretending to look for him. But more and more, Guy couldn’t help but suspect that Van had somehow been complicit in all of it without letting Guy into the loop. Van had so many secrets... and Guy, who was once his master, who should've been privy to everything... wasn't.   
That was what he had been thinking, fiercely taking out his aggressions on a practice dummy, when he heard two servants mention in excited, hushed tones, that Lord Luke had been found. Guy dropped his wooden sword and rushed after them. After all, he was supposed to play the part of the devoted manservant, wasn’t he? It wasn’t like he wanted to see Luke. It… well, it was, in a way. His enemy’s son drove him crazy sometimes. Often. But he’d become… almost a friend. As close a friend as he could be. And Luke loved Van the way he once had. Before… everything. Guy swallowed down his unease and hurried towards the main building to hear the news.

He’d never gotten all the details of what had happened. The house had been in chaos again, but a different kind of chaos, relieved but also newly concerned. Confused. They could probably have dealt with Luke’s death, or his safe return, but his return as… this? It was unfathomable. And Guy, closest to Luke’s age and his regular companion, was both caught in the middle and shoved to the side. 

Luke had been sequestered in his quarters, no admittance. Guy had been prepared to badger his way in to see him. Instead, the Duke had taken one look at him and dragged him inside, hoping that perhaps a familiar friendly face in his own age-group would elicit some response that his own family had not. Duchess Suzanne had been by Luke’s bedside, looking very tired and very ill. And Luke had been… different.

Even seven years later, that first shock still made Guy feel a little ill. The eyes that looked up at him from that bed had been almost empty, not haunted by the ordeal Luke had faced at the hands of his captors, but… erased. Utterly destroyed. He looked up at Guy without recognition, without even a hint of confusion, just childlike curiosity. And as the days went by and nothing returned to Luke except that which was carefully taught, Guy’s feelings were still unsettled. With everything that needed to be done, everything that went into the young Lord’s care and teaching, Luke became, even more than he had been, Guy’s life. But his frustration at being forced to endure it faded as he saw Luke make incredible progress. He’d accepted that Guy was his best friend without question, and while that meant that yes, he often took that friendship for granted, it also meant that he confided in Guy and opened up to him in a way he never had before the kidnapping. He was… more innocent, somehow. Happier. Quicker to laugh and trust, quick to whine but far slower to rise to true anger. He had a very hard time seeing this new, childlike Luke as the son of his enemy. And Luke’s frustration at being confined to the manor, his lack of memory of whatever early years he’d spent with his father, meant that they almost seemed to be on the same side.

Almost.

He couldn’t really put a date to when his feelings had become what they were. When he realized that his vows to stay by Luke’s side and protect him with his life stopped being a lie. Somehow he found that he could hold that contradiction in his mind, to hate the House of Fabre with everything he had but to love its heir with just as much. And in these last weeks, far from Baticul, he had seen Luke at his best and his worst and… well, fallen in love even more.

Quietly, Guy rose from his bed and crossed the narrow distance to Luke’s. He knelt down and gently wiped the string of spit from his mouth, his fingers lingering on Luke’s for just a moment before he moved instead to get the blanket and pull it up a little more snugly around his “master’s” shoulders. Tomorrow would be a big day. Guy had a feeling that even if Luke brushed it off, they’d end up at Choral Castle no matter what they did. And even if Luke didn’t find his memories, they might, together, find some answers. 

The shipwright was still hammering, the waves still pounding, the noise of a naval port not ceasing even deep into the night, but Guy was beginning to feel like he might actually be able to sleep. And, Guy thought as he sat back down on his own bed, answers or not, this journey would undoubtedly bring more changes. More of the world that Luke would have to face. 

But as long as Guy was there, at least he wouldn’t have to face it alone.


End file.
